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Full-Text Articles in Law
The Dilemma Of Odious Debts, Lee C. Buchheit, G. Mitu Gulati, Robert B. Thompson
The Dilemma Of Odious Debts, Lee C. Buchheit, G. Mitu Gulati, Robert B. Thompson
Center for Contract and Economic Organization
When a corrupt governmental regime borrows money in the name of the state, and then steals or squanders the proceeds, must the future citizens of that country repay the loan? The law says yes, but the moral instinct of most people says no.
The odious debt controversy is, at base, a struggle to find a workable legal doctrine that will avoid a morally repugnant result (visiting the sins of corrupt governors on innocent citizens), without undermining the legal basis of all sovereign borrowing. No counterparty, at least no commercial counterparty, would lend money to a sovereign believing that the loan …
People As Resources: Recruitment And Reciprocity In The Freedom-Promoting Approach To Property, Jedediah S. Purdy
People As Resources: Recruitment And Reciprocity In The Freedom-Promoting Approach To Property, Jedediah S. Purdy
Faculty Scholarship
Theorists usually explain and evaluate property regimes either through the lens of economics or by conceptions of personhood. This Article argues that the two approaches are intertwined in a way that is usually overlooked. Property law both facilitates the efficient use and allocation of scarce resources and recognizes and protects aspects of personhood. It must do both, because human beings are both resources for one another and the persons whose moral importance the legal system seeks to protect. This Article explores how property law has addressed this paradox in the past and how it might in the future.
Two bodies …